Planet Poet - Words in Space

LISTEN to my November 10,, 2020 WIOX Radio conversation with writer and playwright Nina Shengold on her new book out this year from Syracuse University Press, Reservoir Year-A Walker’s Book of Days. 

 Nina Shengold's books include Clearcut (Anchor Books), a Book Sense Notable selection; River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (SUNY Press); and 14 theatre anthologies for Vintage Books and Viking Penguin.  Shengold won a Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love and the ABC Playwright Award for Homesteaders.  She teaches creative writing at Vassar College. Shengold has profiled more than 150 writers for Chronogram, Poets & Writers, and Vassar Quarterly. She’s a founding member of the theatre company Actors & Writers, author series Word Café, and Hudson Valley Writers Resist. She was born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, escaped to Alaska, and now lives and works in the foothills of New York’s Catskill Mountains. 

 “Nina Shengold’s memoir explores a reservoir of feelings. Accompanied by her elegant, unpretentious prose, the reader comes upon surprises: a bear, an eagle feather, a crimson forest. Filled to the brim with subtle revelations, of sun-washed illuminations but also the poignant history; a drowned town lies below the shimmering surface. Expect to be moved, and then overcome by the tenderness and variety of Shengold’s emotional literary palette.” —Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements and A Place in the Country 

 Planet Poet’sPoet-At-Large, Pamela Manché Pearce talks about workshopping her poem “Black Iris” and reads the poem in its final, powerful version.

Planet Poet-Words in Space  – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my September 29, 2020 conversation with poet and novelist Lee Slonimsky and essayist and teacher Peter Bricklebank.  Lee, my special co-host, invited Peter to read and discuss his remarkable essay on moths, Virginia Woolf and much, much more - -“An Eclipse of One’s Own.”   

Peter Bricklebank has published in The American Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Kansas Quarterly, Confrontation, Fiction, The New York Times Book Review and The Chicago Tribune, et al. His chapter on essay/memoir appears in The Portable MFA. He has taught at New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and elsewhere, including a year as Nonfiction writer-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and at Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv. Pandemics permitting, he co-teaches a winter workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico. He currently teaches in the online graduate program of National University and at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center. His work is forthcoming in The Bellevue Literary Review.

Lee Slonimsky is a poet, novelist, and financial manager. His latest books of poems are the bilingual Greek/English translation of sonnet sequence Pythagoras in Love from Enipnio Press, translated by Greek National Poetry Prize winner Stamatis Polenakis and published this past May, and Tibbetts Brook Park, 1953, Spuyten Duyvil Press (2019).  His novel, thriller Bermuda Gold, uses the hedge fund industry as background.  Lee collaborated with his wife, Hammett and Mary Higgins Clark Award winner Carol Goodman, on the Black Swan Rising trilogy under the pseudonym Lee Carroll.   Lee’s hedge fund, Ocean Partners LP, takes a special interest in the humane treatment of animals.  Lee taught at The City College of New York and the University of Pennsylvania among others. 

Thanks so much for listening.

Planet Poet – Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my September l, 2020 conversation with poets Cheryl A. Rice and Guy Reed, on their collaborative chapbook, Until The Words Came, published by Post Traumatic Press in 2019 and their new full collections - Cheryl’s Love’s Compass (2019: Kung Fu Treachery Press, an imprint of  Spartan Press), and Guy Reed’s Second Innocence, published this year by Luchador Press, also an imprint of Spartan Press.   

“It’s not unusual for poets to tackle the subject of craft or the ghosts and mentors
who inspired their path.  What sets Cheryl A. Rice & Guy Reed’s Until The Words
Came apart from so many collections is a thoughtful conviction, a strength of
heart that makes their words more than just raw emotion, or a polished sense of
poetics.  It is all of these things.  The late Richard Hugo once said, ‘Poetry is the
art of meaning what you say.’ Well, Rice and Reed mean every word, and their
work together offers a great sense of balance, in a world that sure could use some.”
            -- John Dorsey

 Cheryl A. Rice’s poems have appeared in magazines and journals around the world. In addition to Until the Words Came, her chapbooks include Until the Words Came (2019: Post Traumatic Press), coauthored with Guy Reed, Moses Parts the Tulips (2013: APD Press), and Lost and Found (2019: Flying Monkey Press).  Rice is founder/host of the now defunct “Sylvia Plath Bake-Off.” Her blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/. Rice lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

 Guy Reed is the author of the chapbooks, The Effort To Hold Light Finishing Line Press), and Still Life With Acorn (Fool Head Press), in addition to Until the Words Came.  Reed published in journals, anthologies and has red his work on the podcast, The Strange Recital. A Minnesota native, Reed’s lived in California and Oregon.  He currently resides in the Catskill Mountains with his wife and their children. 

Planet Poet – Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my August, 2020 WIOX radio conversation with Dan Wilcox - poet, photographer, activist and major force in the poetry community of Albany, N.Y.  Dan Wilcox hosts the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, N.Y.  Dan claims to have the world's largest collection of photos of unknown poets. His poems have been published in Post Traumatic Press 2007, Chronogram, Poetica and most recently in "Ghost Fishing: an Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology".  His book “Gloucester Notes” is available from FootHills Publishing.  You can read his Blog at dwlcx.blogspot.com.

 Planet Poet’s Poet-At-Large, Pamela Manché Pearce, discusses the work of surrealist Aimé  Cesaire. 

Planet Poet – Words in Space – NEW PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX radio conversation with poet and vital force in the Hudson Valley poetry community, Teresa Costa.  Teresa is the founder and host of WOMPS – Word Of Mouth Poetry Series housed at the Art Bar in Kingston, N.Y. for the last few years.  Teresa’s work has been recently featured in Gasconade Review book # 5 & CAPS 20th Anniversary 2020  & Home Planet News. Teresa, a compelling conversationalist, reads and discusses Jazz Poets and Beat Poets as well as her own poetry and her WOMPS Series. 

 Planet Poet’s Poet-At-Large, Pamela Manché Pearce discusses the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American author of a published book of poetry.

LISTEN to my WIOX radio conversation with poet, translator and visual artist and poet laureate of Delaware County, N.Y., Bertha Rogers on her exquisite newest works, Uncommon Creatures: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems From the Exeter Book, which she illuminated and translated, and her collection of poetry, Wild, Again (salmonpoetry, 2019).  Don’t miss Bertha Rogers reading in Anglo-Saxon!

Planet Poet – Words in Space PODCAST!  LISTEN to my WIOX radio conversation with poet and award-winning visual artist Pamela Manché Pearce, Planet Poet’s intrepid Poet-At-Large, on her poignant and powerful debut chapbook Widowland, published by Green Bottle Press, London (2018).  Pamela’s work has appeared in ArsMedica (Toronto); The Brooklyn Review, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art’s “Between I and Thou” exhibition compilation; Mondo Greco, Samba, The Widows’ Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival and most recently Nowhere Magazine.  

 “The theme of loss and grief, of courage, are hardly new; and even to acknowledge more recognition now than in previous moments seems like a precarious approach. But there is a canon and Pearce arrives in it with her exquisite verse.”

            -- Greg Bem, YELLOW RABBITS REVIEW

 Poet and publicist Brandon Amico also appears on the show, sharing valuable tips on how poets can best publicize their work.

Yours in Radio, Sharon

Sharon Israel hosts Planet Poet - Words In Space, airing monthly on WIOX radio Tuesdays at 1pm EST. 91.3 FM. For streaming on-line click on www.WIOXradio.org. or http://tinyurl.com/wioxcatskills. Best with Chrome or Foxfire.

Visit Sharon's website: https://www.sharonisraelpoet.com/

This week, the podcast will feature my conversation with poet, editor, translator, lawyer and champion of the environment, Elizabeth J. Coleman, on her wildly relevant and beautiful anthology, HERE, Poems for the Planet, published by Copper Canyon Press in April, 2019. HERE, edited by Coleman, features a dramatic foreword from His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Coleman’s superb international selection of 125 living poets including U.S. Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize-winners and youth poets; and a guide to activism from the Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.sharonisraelpoet.com/blog/coleman-here